The adage that in wartime you can have either guns or butter, but you can’t have both never seemed more vividly illustrated than in Russia recently where the high cost of butter has thieves stealing it so often that protective covers had to be placed on it in supermarkets.
With inflation running around 10% in Russia, interest rates at 21% and mortgages in similar territory, basic staple items such as butter (up 26% this year) have become harder for ordinary Russians to buy.
Source: Financial Times
Thefts of packs of butter have highlighted the impact of skyrocketing inflation on Russia’s war economy.
President Vladimir Putin’s splurge on arms and ammunition has helped Moscow to maintain an advantage on the battlefield in Ukraine, but it is increasingly coming at the cost of soaring prices for everyday essentials.
Security footage in Ekaterinburg, the capital of Russia’s defence industry, recently captured two masked men breaking into a dairy shop. As one raided the cash register, the other made off with 20kg of butter.
Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, said: “Your average butter churning factory would be more than happy to meet the demand and work in three shifts too. But there aren’t enough people for them to hire.”
“You can’t fight inflation and a war at the same time,” she said.
Up until 2022, Russia used to import about 40 tons of butter from around the world. With sanctions, and countries just not willing to trade with shitheads, that shrank to almost nothing. In 2024, they’re now importing about 90 tons from Iran, Turkey, and the UAE.
Protective containers. According the the Kyiv Independent, “The butter crisis in Russia continues to worsen with the price of a 400 gram package now reaching the price of 835 rubles $8.53 as of October 28th.” (400 grams is about a pound.)
In Yekaterinburg, russia, criminals broke into a store and stole 20 kg of butter. The head of the Investigative Committee of the russian Federation, Alexander Bastrykin, took the case under personal control.
The press secretary of the russian President Dmitry Peskov said at a… pic.twitter.com/GRxutLdiRx
— Jürgen Nauditt 🇩🇪🇺🇦 (@jurgen_nauditt) November 5, 2024
And, adding insult to injury, when Russia imported 20 tons of the stuff recently from the UAE it turned out to be from Ukraine!
